Jaisalmer

Well I can't say my time in jaisalmer was very productive. I spent 3 days in the hotel room and didn't do very much apart from take walks from the bed to the toilet and back again. Woo!

However our 3rd night was lovely. It was the first time I'd actually been out in jaisalmer and we went to a lovely restaurant. Martyn had been out by himself that day and met up with some people we'd previously met on the train. So after our meal we went to their hotel and had a few drinks and a lot of chat.

Meghna, Prashant and Jasem (everybody say hi) are architects from Bombay (NOT Mumbai) who decided to holiday round Rajasthan for a couple of weeks. They're not that keen on Slumdog Millionaire and like a good beer and chin wag. We chatted well into the night and met up again for lunch the next day.

After lunch we went on a camel safari, we were driven by jeep out of Jaisalmer to cenotaphs, which were beautiful and commemorated the many wives of maharajas who on his death, would jump into a fire to die with him. This last happened in India in 1843, far too recent for my taste.

We were took on to a deserted village, that the guide introduced to us as the vegetarian village. I was mildly confused as most places have vegetarians and there are many vegetarian villages too!

Turned out the evil Salim Singh was head of the State and the people didn't like his he was running the show so one night 84 villages across the state emptied at once! Hopefully that got the message across! 

No-one lives there now as at night you can allegedly hear the villagers wailing and crying as they left their beloved home.

Then we met our camel man, David, and hopped somewhat ungracefully onto a camel each. I remembered Meghna saying that the best bit of a camel ride is them standing up and sitting down. I think I respectfully disagree! The standing up was ok, camels are pretty leggy! They stand with their front legs then their back so that you almost see-saw backwards then forwards. But after a short time of David leading thr camels on foot he then needed to get on mine with me so it had to sit down again! This is a bit daunting as you feel that youre just going to topple off the front!

The walk across the desert was beautiful, and nothing like anything I've done before. Once you get used to the camels' gait it was ok, if a bit wibbly.

After 2 hours or so trekking we stopped at the end of the dunes and had a delicious dinner of curried potatoes and cabbage with rice and chappati, under the moonlight. What an experience!